Many of the ministry requests for their piece of the fiscal 2020 budget submitted at the end of August are all-time highs.
The Finance Ministry on Thursday announced that general account budget requests from government agencies and ministries came to a record-setting ¥104.99 trillion. Behind this figure are mounting social security costs and increased spending on defense. It was also the sixth straight year that the budget requests have topped ¥100 trillion.
In addition, a special request quota will be set up for economic stimulus measures to ease the possible negative impact from the consumption tax hike in October to 10 percent from the current 8 percent. If these figures are added, the initial budget for fiscal 2020, which will be finalized for Cabinet approval in December, is expected to surpass the 2019 initial budget of ¥101.4 trillion. Japan's fiscal health is in dire straits, but these record high requests do not show any sense of crisis by the government.